Obama backing off strict crime policy

For years, it was one of the GOP’s most potent political epithets: labeling a Democrat “soft on crime.”

But the Obama White House has taken the first steps in decades to move away from a strict lock-‘em-up mentality on crime — easing sentences for crack cocaine possession, launching a top-to-bottom review of sentencing policies and even sounding open to reviewing guidelines that call for lengthy prison terms for people convicted of child pornography offenses.

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Last month, when Obama signed long-debated legislation to reduce the disparity between prison sentences for crack and powdered cocaine, some advocates hailed it as a watershed moment in the nation’s approach to criminal justice.

And even with a tough election looming, the Democratic Congress is signaling it might consider moving away from strict incarceration as the preferred option and toward rehabilitation and out-of-prison punishments – developments that might have been attacked in the 1990s as the coddling of criminals.

At the urging of a conservative Democrat, Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, the House passed a bill in July to create a federal commission to study criminal sentences. The measure cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier in the year with little resistance from Republicans.

“I think the political landscape around the issue is shifting and I think that will provide room for the administration to address some of these issues,” said Jennifer Bellamy of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Advocates point to several reasons for the shift toward a less-draconian approach to crime and for its decline as a hot-button political issue. Crime rates are at some of the lowest levels in a generation. Stories of offenders who got decades behind bars for minor roles in drug operations have generated some public sympathy. States and the federal government are grappling with huge budget woes, raising doubts about policies that are causing prison populations - and costs - to go up.

In addition, Republicans now accuse Democrats of being soft on terrorists. As a result, tinkering with the way run-of-the-mill criminals are treated doesn’t seem to be the political third rail any more.

Mary Price of Families Against Mandatory Minimums noted that the crack-disparity bill passed in Congress with remarkably little consternation. “I think other concerns have crowded out some of the hysteria around crime,” Price said.

“Republicans could have said, ‘If this passes, we’ll make this an issue in the midterms.’ Nobody said that,” Price observed. “This was not an issue for Republicans.”

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CORRECTION: Corrected by: MJ Lee @ 09/13/2010 01:01 PM
Correction: The original version of this story contained inaccurate details about the chairman of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, William K. Sessions III. He is a sitting U.S. District Court judge in Vermont, not the former FBI director and federal judge with a similar name.